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A comment on Howard Marks obituary: 'Britain's most charming drug smuggler'. Parent comment

Re:Howard Marks obituary: 'Britain's most charming drug smug... by philh on Monday April 11, 2016 @08:05AM (#11470947)
> MI6 was known to exist even it not confirmed by the govt. Ever heard of James Bond? Myth rooted in fact, every UK citizen who has read Flemming/Greene/etc knew there was an MI6.

Unless there's more to this than it sounds like - why would people assume an agency in some fictional stories was real?

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Re:Howard Marks obituary: 'Britain's most charming drug smug... by pjc50 on Monday April 11, 2016 @08:18AM (#11470998)
known to exist even it not confirmed by the govt. is the key phrase. MI5 even kept up official denial of their existence for some years after moving into a huge, highly conspicuous building on the Thames.

It does open up a big-picture question of "what is a fact in politics", when operating in the face of official denial and secrecy. MI6 was mentioned in the popular, banned memoir Spycatcher, published in 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher

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Re:Howard Marks obituary: 'Britain's most charming drug smug... by philh on Monday April 11, 2016 @08:28AM (#11471031)
The specific phrase that I was questioning was every UK citizen who has read Flemming/Greene/etc. Parent makes it sound like people knew about it from reading spy stories, which seems unlikely.
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